New RIAA P2P Trial: Fair Use Defense Rejected

[admin]

In RIAA's new P2P trial, against Joel Tenenbaum for sharing 30 songs on Kazaa, the judge in the case has denied the use of the "Fair Use" defense in the case.

It's a blow for Mr. Tenenbaum just hours into his new trial, especially given the fact that he had already admitted to the fact that he downloaded those files, and that his only real defense was "Fair Use".

The judge said allowing the use of the "Fair Use" defense would have been too broad, but did list several other situations where fair use may apply, including downloading MP3s for sampling purposes and also for ripping tracks from owned CDs. And any file sharing before laws concerning this area were clear, as well as before paid outlets were available may also fall under fair use.

As for the question of proving lost sales resulted from the file sharing, the judge states that it is true that not every file download will result in a lost sale, but that it was also clear some paying consumers would shift to illegal downloads if it were deemed fair use and so Mr. Tenenbaum cannot claim it as his defense.

So it looks like there won't be a good outcome for Mr. Tenenbaum, and the best he could hope for is to have a small amount in terms of damages rewarded against him.

More:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/judge-rejects-fair-use-defense-as-tenenbaum-p2p-trial-begins.ars

[admin]

A jury has found Tenenbaum guilty and has rewarded the RIAA $675,000 in damages, or $22,500 per song (30 songs).

[Derree]

A jury has found Tenenbaum guilty and has rewarded the RIAA $675,000 in damages, or $22,500 per song (30 songs).

Thats brutal, and it just seems so wrong...

[doctorhardware]

I wonder how much it cost the RIAA for that ruling to be in their favor.

[admin]

This is something I justed posted in the latest Weekly News Roundup in response to the damages being rewarded and the technical details what has to be done for the studios to actually lose this much money (using the $1.92 M damages rewarded for 24 songs in the previous case):

Doing a little math in my head, $1.92 million for 24 songs work out to be $80,000 per song. Now assuming each song costs $1 to buy on iTunes or whatever, then that means the RIAA claims that 80,000 copies of each song has been shared illegally. Assuming on average each song is about 3 MB in size, that means 240 GB of uploads. Now on my upload link (30 KB/s), which is fairly standard here in Australia, this task would take 2276 hours, or 94 days of continuous uploads while not using my connection for anything else. Now times that by 24 songs, and it would take 6 years of continuous uploads for Jammie Thomas-Rasset to rack up the amount of awarded damages (assuming she has the same connection as I do, so it may be “only” 3 years, or up to 12 years for her to do the same), and that’s not even taking into account that the content owners do not make $1 per song, as that’s the retail price.

The damages rewarded against Joel Tenenbaum are "more reasonable", at 640 hours per song or only 800 days of continuous uploads for 30 songs at my upload speed.

Of course with these kind of cases, while they're only talking about 30 songs, that's only a small representation of all the songs that Joel Tenenbaum have shared, but still, you're looking at over 2 years of continuous uploads in order to be able to share so much with so many (and this assumes that every shared copy would otherwise have resulted in a sale, the reality is probably only like 1 in 10).

[greenmatter]

A jury has found Tenenbaum guilty and has rewarded the RIAA $675,000 in damages, or $22,500 per song (30 songs).

thats pretty criminal